The Black Briefing. Why well-intentioned policies fail so often, and what you can do about it

The Salzburg Global Seminar turned out to be a starter for many interesting conversations. We will follow up on them in the months to follow.

Halfway through the seminar, I realized that many people assumed that their main problem was to have the ear of the policy maker. If they could do that, policy makers could just effect change in the desired way. I find that to be a dangerous oversimplification.

Therefore, my contribution to the Salzburg deep dive was the Black Briefing. It was a rather bleak talk on what government really is (an agent, subject to evolutionary pressure to survive and grow). I also briefly covered what would-be reformers and change makers can do to factor the nature of government into their plans.